Reconstruction of residence at Catalhoyuk at its peak in c.7000 BC. Illustration by Kathryn Killackey.

Cuneiform tablet with seal impression, Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. c.2100-2050 BC

Bronze Akkadian head, often identified with Sargon of Akkad (c.2300 BC)

Bronze Age Aegean

The Bronze Age collapse c.1200 BC

Mosaic map at Madaba, Jordan, C6 AD

Part of the Peutinger Map, showing the Crimea, Thrace, Asia Minor, Crete, and Egypt.

C13 copy of C4 or 5 AD [?] copy of a map attributed to Agrippa (62-12 BC)

• Eratosthenes (c.285-194 BC)

• Polymath, wrote literary criticism, chronology, mathematical treatises, philosophy and poetry

• Calculated circumference of earth, accurate to about 10% of modern calculations

Map of the known world in Ptolmey's Geography, manuscript from Constantinople c.1300 AD now in Vatican Library